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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29025522">The Brother of the Wolf</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athaia/pseuds/Athaia'>Athaia</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Earth's Children - Jean M. Auel</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Canon-Typical Sexism, Gen, Mentions of Infanticide, Ostracism, Power Struggle, Some spiritual agonizing on Durc's part</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 03:28:18</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>20,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29025522</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Athaia/pseuds/Athaia</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>"What good will Ayla's son ever be?" Broud motioned. "He's so deformed, he doesn't deserve to live. Everyone says her baby will be unlucky."</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Durc &amp; Uba, Durc/Ura (Earth's Children)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Five Figure Fanwork Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirque/gifts">cirque</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Many thanks to thinkatory for beta reading!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The deer trap was empty again. Its creator, alone in the woods and away from disapproving eyes, allowed himself to frown. It had to be possible to catch a deer with a noose, if one adapted it to size and used sturdier materials. Durc had caught many a rabbit with his traps, and saw no reason why it shouldn’t work for bigger animals, too. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">It was a pity he couldn’t ask any of the other men for help; he had tried it once, and they had looked at him as if he’d lost his mind.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“What kind of rabbit do you want to catch with such a huge trap?” Grev had asked. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“One with horns,” Durc had answered; he couldn’t lie about his plans, but he also didn’t want to give them away before he’d been successful.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His joke had fallen flat; the others had simply changed the subject, politely ignoring his apparent nonsense.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">It wasn’t that they had no imagination. They could look at the imprint of a hoof and see the animal that had made it, how it had moved, and where, and could even deduce why it had done so and where it had likely gone. They could look at a lump of flint and see the tool hidden in it, and know how to aim their strokes to free it from the surrounding stone.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But to enlarge a rabbit in their mind and outfit it with horns was beyond their mental capacity. They could see the hidden potential in their environment; but they lacked the ability to envision the fantastical.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc stared at the empty sling and forcibly shut down his disappointment. His other traps had been full; they’d at least have rabbit today.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Again.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Hunting alone would’ve been easier if his spears had been made for throwing instead of thrusting. While it was almost impossible to get close enough to ram it into a prey’s body, the hunter would’ve easily gotten close enough for a throw.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But the dense woodlands that were his people’s preferred habitat didn’t make long-range weapons feasible, and so the Clan had never invented them. They weren’t very innovative in general; over time, they had adapted almost perfectly to their environment, to the point where changing the established ways didn’t promise any advantage anymore. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">There was no need to sneak up on an animal close enough to throw a spear at it, not when a whole hunting party ambushed it from the cover of the underbrush, cutting off all routes of escape so that the luckiest, or the most daring, of the hunters could finish it off. Even when they ventured out into the borderland between woodland and steppe, they stuck to this method of sneaking up to and encircling their prey, trapping it between them and a river, or in a canyon, or driving it off a cliff. They had no need for long-distance weapons to kill reindeer, or bison, or horses.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But that method was useless when you were forced to hunt alone. Alone, because the leader of your cave had convinced everyone that you brought bad luck to their hunts.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc inhaled deeply, then forced the bitterness that had welled up at this last thought away. Dwelling on what couldn’t be changed was useless, and worse, the feeling would still cling to his body when he returned to the cave; highly inappropriate for a man to let his emotions run rampant like that. Inappropriate, and unwise, too, to give Broud more reason to pick on him.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">With a last look at the untouched snare, Durc turned away, but his feet carried him even farther from the cave; he felt no urge to return so soon, while there was still enough light to try his luck elsewhere. Now that the sun had vanished below the horizon, the woods began to stir; animals were leaving their hidden lairs to seek out the brooks and rivers to quench their thirst, and cautiously stepped into little clearings to graze.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc knew all their favorite places to drink and feed, and was now slowly edging closer to the small river cutting through the hilly terrain to the west of their cave, carefully keeping track of the lazy evening breeze. He had masked his own scent by rubbing fresh pine needles and crushed leaves across his body, but it never hurt to take the extra precaution of staying upwind. The rushing water would drown out any little sounds he might be making, and his eyesight was better in the twilight than that of most of his prey; another adaptation his Clan ancestors had gifted him with.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Maybe he’d be able to ambush a deer at the riverbank, drive it into deeper water, and deliver the killing blow. He could feed himself and his mate with rabbits, but their furs, while soft and warm, didn’t compare to deerskin. You couldn’t make a tent out of rabbit furs. You could barely make a winter wrap or a sleeping fur out of them, though Ura had managed to produce some adequate covers from them. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But rabbits, squirrels, hamsters, and other small game didn’t provide her with large bones to use as spoons, ladles or plates; large enough stomachs and bladders to make water bags or store fat — not that they even had enough fat to render it. Not enough horn to make glue, or sinews to make thongs...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He could smell the water even before he heard the gurgling sounds of the creek, and though he slowed down his movements even more and strained all his senses for detecting sounds or movements of his next meal, his focus never wavering from his goal, his shoulders relaxed, and his forehead — high and round, and not at all Clan-like - smoothed. Being near water always soothed his mood. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The Clan sought out rivers to catch fish, frogs, crayfish, clams and snails, and to harvest watercress, water chestnuts, water lentils, the roots of water lilies, cattail, and reed, and a host of other plants; but nobody spent more time there than strictly necessary; it was just another place to collect food, not something meant to bring idle pleasure.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Maybe feeling happy near a river was just another sign that he was not properly Clan; Broud would’ve said so, had he known about it. Durc eased into the dense reeds, moving even more slowly to mask the disturbance he caused in the constant weaving movement of the long stalks, and settled down to wait for the deer that would hopefully turn up any moment for their evening drink.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He could wait for a long time like this, not moving a muscle, ignoring the chill of the water and the night air, ignoring the slowly building ache in his legs and back, never succumbing to the boredom that threatened to dull his focus and attention. No matter if Broud thought he shouldn’t hunt with the rest of the men, it was simply unthinkable that any able-bodied male of the Clan would not be trained as a hunter from the day he could hold a toy spear; and despite all the bad luck that Durc had suffered  - or caused? - he’d been at least lucky in having one of the best hunters as his teacher.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Brun had been more than a teacher; he had been leader before Broud, and had used the authority he still held to protect Durc from Broud’s more violent abuses. That had changed when he had died, but by that time, Durc had already made his first kill and gotten his hunting ceremony.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He touched the leather pouch hanging from his neck, thinking of the piece of red mammoth tooth inside. Whatever petty harassment Broud might think up, he couldn’t take this away. Durc was a hunter of the Clan, even if he was forced to carry out his hunts alone.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Movement beyond the veil of reeds alerted him to the arrival of the first animals. His fingers gripped the spear more tightly, but that was the only sign of his growing excitement. Not even his breathing changed.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">This was the most critical moment. The deer knew instinctively that they were at their most vulnerable now, checking their surroundings every few moments, ready to bolt at the slightest indication of danger. Even a deep breath could set them off now.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc let himself sink deeper into the water, until his nose was barely above the surface. Then he began to slowly drift towards the little cluster of deer that were nervously sipping water, their heads constantly bobbing up to warily scan the treeline.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They didn’t expect danger coming from the river — at this latitude, there were no big predators lurking in the water, at least not until now. Durc still made sure that his movements didn’t differ from a drifting log of wood as he slowly made his way over to the herd.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He was close enough to smell them now; almost close enough to bolt from the water and thrust his spear into the little doe that had stepped into the water until it reached to her fetlocks. Careless, that one, which would take her out of the game soon—</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The herd exploded into flight, racing in every direction, as another animal jumped into their midst from the underbrush. It stopped for a moment, startled at the sudden appearance of water that was cutting off its escape, and the equally startled Durc saw that it was a young buck — maybe one of the yearlings that had been driven from his herd by the patriarch.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Then a pack of wolves appeared just as suddenly from the woods, and tore it down.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They ignored the other moving targets, as well as the human standing knee-deep in the river. They had been the cause of the buck’s desperate flight, and now they were its undoing.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc stared at the carnage in front of him, too stunned to move. Usually, wolves preferred to retreat from human settlements, and encounters between the two predator species were rare; but Broud’s clan had moved here only recently, and the wolves of this region still regarded it as their territory.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc wouldn’t argue with them about it — not while he was on his own. Had he been with a hunting party, they’d have driven the pack away with ease, and claimed the deer for themselves. As it was now, he could only watch in helpless frustration as meat and hide vanished to a cacophony of growls and huffs.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">This was how it was done, he thought. Hunting was meant to be done as a group, working together to encircle the prey, then bring it down together. It didn’t matter who made the killing blow — well, to some it did; but for the lone man standing in the river, this kind of petty grandstanding had lost all relevance a long time ago.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He had learned to make do with traps, to hunt with his bola— a skill that Brun had taken great pride in, and that Durc had striven to excel in just to make Brun happy. He had become extraordinarily successful with both methods, out of the sheer necessity to not only feed himself, but also Ura, his mate, and that success had helped to distract him from the devastating implications of his leader’s ostracism.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But as he watched the wolves’ efficient slaying, he suddenly became painfully aware how precarious his life had become. He still received a cut from any prey the hunting party brought back to the cave; but it was the worst cut, as he hadn’t contributed to the kill. He and his mate were reasonably well fed, but the bola wasn't of much use in the forest, and so he had to rely mostly on the traps, and those didn't catch bigger game. The deer trap had been born from his growing desperation.<br/></span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">One of the wolves raised its head from the carnage and snarled at him. Durc grit his teeth and retreated deeper into the water. The hunt was over for now; he’d wait out the night in his own hideout, and check his deer trap at dawn. He couldn’t bear going back empty-handed; not this time.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Maybe tomorrow he could turn his luck around.</span>
</p><hr/><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His luck had indeed turned, Durc discovered the next morning: a deer had run into his trap, probably too panicked in its flight from the wolf pack to spot it in time, and in its frantic attempts to break free of the noose, had strangled itself to death. Durc ruefully remembered his annoyance when the pack had spoiled his hunt at the river; now he briefly touched his amulet and thanked Gray Wolf for his generosity. He didn't address his totem very often — he felt it was disrespectful to bother the spirits with trivial everyday prattle — but this was too much of a coincidence to ignore.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">So he was in high spirits when he returned to the clan's latest home, the deer slung across his shoulders. He didn't expect anyone to congratulate him, because that would've required for them to acknowledge that he could have anything other than </span> <em> <span class="tm9">bad </span> </em> <span class="tm8">luck, but it was a small demonstration of defiance to Broud, and these days, Durc took his satisfaction where he could get it. Their constant, subtle war was an exhausting undercurrent to the clan's daily life, but Durc knew that if one of them could call it off, it was Broud, and it didn't look as if that would ever happen. Broud was as famously vindictive as his totem, the Wooly Rhinoceros.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc couldn’t remember what had started their feud, and when he had asked Vorn, the mate of his foster mother Uba, he hadn’t gotten a satisfying answer. Maybe Broud had always despised him, but Durc’s childhood had been undisturbed by the leader’s wrath; Broud had ignored him, and if there had been any displeasure from his end, Brun had shielded the boy from it. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc had only become aware that Broud saw him as repulsive and deformed at the Clan Gathering — when he had been forced to welcome Durc’s future mate Ura into his clan. That’s when he had begun to openly blame Durc for every mishap that befell the clan, from bad weather to miscarriages, to unsuccessful hunts. Everything was the work of malevolent spirits that clung to Durc due to his unnatural heritage. Their only chance to evade disaster was to keep moving, trying to shake the spirits off their scent; but as long as people of mixed spirits stayed in their midst, this could only bring temporary relief. And since Brun had expressly wished them to stay, Broud wouldn’t tell them to leave; there was no need to incur the wrath of the ancestors on top of their already existing troubles with the spirit world.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Mog-ur was strangely silent during those rants, but since he didn’t speak against anything Broud said, the clan had to assume that their leader’s explanations were true, even if his body language told them that it wasn’t the whole truth. The older people never commented on his claims save for exchanging meaningful glances which they didn’t explain to the younger generation.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">As a result, Durc and Ura moved within an invisible circle of their own, as everyone kept a careful distance to them. They weren’t exactly ostracised, as nobody wanted to make them too unhappy, and potentially anger any adjacent spirits; on the other hand, nobody wanted to associate too closely with them, either, and have their bad luck rub off on them.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">As he made his way up to the entrance of the cave, Durc wondered idly how long they would stay here. It was a fine cave, as far as he could see, spacious and protected from icy winds by a long, narrow passageway, but Broud always found reason to move out in spring. This had been going on for almost as long as Durc could remember; it had to be unsettling for the totems — they didn't like to get moved to a new home over and over again. It certainly had unsettled the members of the clan who worried about the totems' reaction to their constant wandering. He had caught some of the men talking about it, watching the conversation from the corner of his eyes.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"The totems must be unhappy," Groob had said. "That sickness last spring that killed Ona's and Igra's children? That was them! Because they didn't want to move out yet again!"</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"But what if it wasn't them?" Karg argued. Younger than Durc, he had hopes of being chosen to be Mog-ur's apprentice, and fancied himself to know more about spirits than the others. "What if it's... those malevolent spirits? I think it's wise that Broud moves to another cave each spring — that makes it harder for them to find us. Who knows what damage they'd do if they settled in with us? They could even drive the totems away!"</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Stillness had settled over the group, except for signs being made to avert evil.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"If that's true, then Broud is right when he says how they still manage to find us again and again," Borg had signed, with muted, vague gestures as if he didn't actually want to say it.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And all eyes had turned to Durc, who pretended not to notice.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"I don't understand why mog-ur-before-Goov named him Durc," Groob had finally said. "That name finds trouble all on its own, even without a swarm of mischievous spirits drawn to his mixed nature."</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They had dropped the subject at that, as if it had burned their fingers, but Durc still bared his teeth at the memory. Of course they'd find a way to pin the blame for all the clan's troubles on him. Everyone now agreed with Broud that he was half-cursed himself, a bad-luck talisman the clan was forced to drag along wherever they went. If they ever managed to forget it, Broud made sure to remind them that one of the Others had left her demonic spawn in their midst, and that leader-before-him had made sure they'd have to endure his presence.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc cast the memory from his mind as he walked towards his own hearth; dwelling on Broud and his obsessive campaign against him would only change his body's stance into subtle challenge without his conscious intention, and he didn't want to draw the leader's ire just now. Instead, he focused on the delicious smells rising from the various campfires, and thought of the rabbit stew Ura would make from the rabbits he had also caught last night, and how she would prepare the deer later...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He caught movement at Broud's fire, and slightly turned his head to stay ahead of any signs of trouble. It wasn't done to look into another's hearth, but Durc had made it a habit to be aware of Broud's position and body language at all times. He had become very subtle about it; he'd had a lot of practice.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But the other men raised their heads and drew nearer, too: Broud was about to make an announcement. Durc paused, the deer weighing heavier on his shoulders. He had to know what this was about.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"Brac has told me he found a herd of bison to the north," Broud was saying. "We will leave tomorrow." He glowed with triumph, as if he had gone north to scout for big game himself. "Totems willing, we will eat well this winter."</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc felt a surge of excitement run through him. They had been waiting for the scouts’ return for days now, and every hunter was basically sitting on his packed gear, ready to go at a moment’s notice. This was the big hunt before the cold came, the one that would ensure that they wouldn’t go hungry, or lose the old and the very young to the deadliest of seasons.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud’s eyes fell on Durc, and his expression went cold. "Is there something you want to say, Durc?"</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The hunters were watching him from the corners of their eyes, Durc knew; but his own gaze remained fixed on Broud. “Only that I am ready to add my spears to the hunt.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"We don't need your kind of luck, Durc," Broud sneered. "Besides, we're not going to hunt rabbits. Do you even remember how to use a spear anymore, since you spend your whole time throwing pebbles now?"</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc raised his chin, failing to hide his own annoyance. "As you can see with your own eyes, I also hunt bigger game than rabbits. And knowing how to throw rocks didn’t make Brun a worse hunter." Brun had been a master with the bola; nobody had ever made fun of </span> <em> <span class="tm9">him.</span> </em></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud narrowed his eyes; he had never reminded Durc of a rhinoceros as much as in this moment. Small-eyed, irascible, hulking... even his nose seemed to mimic the slanting snout of his totem. Maybe Durc's gestures had been more blunt than warranted; but he had to hold the deer with one hand to keep it from sliding off his shoulders, and one-handed signs tended to be stunted and choppy.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc didn't give him time to work himself into a rage. "I'm a good hunter — look at this deer I caught all by myself. I never brought bad luck when I went with you." Which had happened rarely enough. "You’re short of one hunter, and it'd be foolish to forego </span> <em> <span class="tm9">two </span> </em> <span class="tm8">capable hunters without good reason."</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud bristled at Durc calling him foolish, and Durc cursed himself for letting his emotions get the better of him. Now he had given him not only a good reason not to take him along, but also to punish him for his disrespect. Men didn't get beaten, but Durc was sure Broud would think of something equally humiliating and unpleasant.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"The hunt would be more difficult with so many hunters missing," Vorn spoke up. Broud's second in command was moving his hands slowly and softly, carefully choosing his words. "The medicine woman assured me that Tog won't be able to walk swiftly until the moon is full again." </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Behind him, the other hunters shifted slightly. Broud’s decision to exclude Durc from most of their hunts was somewhat controversial, bad spirits notwithstanding; they simply were too few to afford such a luxury. Most of the time, superstitious fear won out — nobody wanted to risk bad luck if they didn’t have to. But this hunt was too important to attempt with less than every available hunter.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Broud swiveled his squinted eyes from him to Durc. "And where were</span> <em> <span class="tm8">you</span></em> <span class="tm8"> when that boar ran over Tog?"</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc refrained from showing his teeth, barely; he could already feel the muscles around his nose twitching. "Throwing pebbles at rabbits, I think." </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">"I will give every hunter a strong protective charm." Goov, the mog-ur, stepped between them, visibly determined to cut off the brewing fight then and there. "But Durc </span> <em> <span class="tm9">is</span> </em> <span class="tm8"> a good hunter — he had good teachers. And I trust in the benevolence of the totems — they want us to survive this winter, so that we can continue to make a home for them."</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">It was rare that the mog-ur spoke up in discussions about mundane matters, and rarer still that he took sides against the leader; but the discussion had happened in front of the women and children, and everyone felt uneasy about that — those councils were meant for men's eyes only. The hunters didn't want this to be dragged out even more, and they trusted the mog-ur's authority. If he said that his charms were strong enough to ward off bad luck, they would be strong enough. And they could use another man for the hunt, it was true.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud, sensing the shift, made a dismissive chop with his arm. "So tag along, what do I care." But everyone could see that he was fuming.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc suspected that Broud hoped that a bison would finally run him into</span> <span class="tm8">the ground this time. So far, it had never happened, though, and the hunting party had been forced to return with their bad-luck member every time. Maybe the vindictive ghost of his mother protected him, just to spite Broud. Uba had once hinted at something like that, after one of Broud’s more vicious rants, and the thought had stuck with Durc; it gave him a strange satisfaction to imagine that it was his mother’s spirit who vexed Broud, and not a nameless swarm of spirits clinging to him for no real reason.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura's eyes lit up when he brought the deer to their fireplace. Her eyes, Durc thought, were the most beautiful thing about her. When he had first seen her at the Clan Gathering, he had called her ugly; with her huge, bulging forehead and her tiny nose, she looked like a caricature of a woman. He knew even then that his own forehead looked the same, but he didn't have to see it every day. Over time, he had gotten used to the sight of her, and more conscious of the fact that he was even uglier than his mate.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura rose to cut up the deer and prepare the meat for curing. She moved clumsily, being far into her pregnancy. With a contrite look, she signed, "this woman regrets that she can't come with you to the big hunt..."</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc glanced at her swollen belly. She'd be due any day now — he had picked up that much from his foster mother. "It is no matter," he said dismissively. "There will be enough women there to cut the meat." </span> <em> <span class="tm9">And I won't get much of it, anyway, </span> </em> <span class="tm8">but he kept that thought to himself. Broud would arrange it to keep him on the sidelines, unable to make a good thrust with his spear, and then use that circumstance to deny him a good cut of the meat. Sometimes, Durc wondered if he was trying to get rid of him and Ura by starving them, or, failing that...</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His eyes wandered back to his mate's belly. He hoped that this child would be luckier than its siblings before it. Maybe it would be born while Broud was hunting bison; and maybe he wouldn't be back before it had lived for seven days.</span>
</p><hr/><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc’s bad luck stayed faithfully by his side: Ura began to stir during the night, and although she kept quiet, she grew ever more restless, until Durc rekindled the hearth fire and asked what was bothering her.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">She sent him to fetch the medicine woman. As he had already suspected, Ura’s labor had started.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc knew that it could take all day before the child was finally out of his mate’s belly — and Broud had made it clear that the hunters would leave before dawn. He had also announced, to Durc’s surprise and worry, that the medicine woman would accompany them, since it was a given that Durc’s presence would cause at least one hunter to be severely injured by a bison. His mate would have to give birth without Uba’s assistance.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He wondered whether Broud had decided to take Uba along to punish him for insisting to join the hunt. While women had given birth without the help of a medicine woman before, it was dangerous to both mother and child. All kinds of things could happen to either — though Durc wasn’t exactly clear on the details — things that a medicine woman knew how to deal with. If Ura died in childbed, he’d be without a mate; and given his appearance and Broud’s attitude towards people of mixed spirits, it would be unlikely that he’d ever get another one.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His foster mother quickly examined his mate, then nodded at him. Durc silently grabbed his weapons; he had been ready to leave for the hunt anyway. He didn’t acknowledge the other women who were now drifting towards his hearthfire — only two of them, since Broud had commandeered the others to come with them. From what Durc had gathered, Broud was determined to kill enough bison to equal a mammoth; not that they had ever killed a mammoth, as far as he could recall. He only knew of mammoth hunts from Brun’s stories.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Uba!” Broud snapped. “Come here!”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc, along with everyone else, watched as Uba slowly straightened and turned around. She did nothing outrageous, like standing completely erect, or staring down their leader, but her gestures were clear and decisive. “This woman has entered labor. The medicine woman will stay and assist her giving birth.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The silence descending on the cave was palpable; everyone froze.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Women didn’t argue with men. A woman with a rebellious streak, rare as that was, might obey slowly, or do her tasks sloppily, but open resistance was unthinkable. The only possible exception was the medicine woman, because her devotion to her calling superseded every other authority, save for that of the mog-ur.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc kept his gaze fixed at the cave wall opposite of him, careful to not even twitch a finger. It had been stupid of Broud not to forsee Uba’s decision; if he had, he could’ve generously told her to stay and take care of Ura. Uba would’ve obeyed the leader’s command, and the natural order would’ve been confirmed yet again. If Broud was so worried that Durc would bring bad luck to the hunting party, he could even have ordered him to stay, and Durc would’ve obeyed that order, too, if grudgingly.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Instead, Broud had forced Uba to openly oppose him — no matter that her status gave her the right, she was still a </span> <em> <span class="tm9">woman, </span> </em> <span class="tm8">and on a subconscious level that fact overrode her role as medicine woman for the onlookers. It was still present enough in everyone’s mind that they would’ve been greatly disturbed if Broud forced her to leave Ura’s side; but conceding her point would gravely damage Broud’s status, too. It was an intractable dilemma.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Although Broud was outside his range of vision, Durc could sense his rage. It was like the tension he could feel in the air before a thunderstorm. Broud had caught on to his blunder, but instead of retreating in embarrassment, or seeking a diplomatic resolution, he threw himself into his ire and directed it at Uba.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“She will only make another deformed child! I won’t delay the hunt just so you can get rid of it!”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc dared to steal a quick glance at his mother. Her face was tense, betraying her unease, but she didn’t budge. “The mother may still need assistance. I don’t wish to delay the hunt, but the medicine woman needs to stay at Ura’s side until she is safely done.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud stared at her for long moments. Uba didn’t meet his gaze, of course, but she made no sign to give in, either.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Abruptly, Broud turned away and stomped to his own hearth. “You don’t disappoint, Durc,” he hurled at the young hunter, “this hunt is already cursed before we’ve even set foot outside the cave. Now we’ll lose a whole day, or however long your mate needs to give birth” — his gesture implied a rude connotation of proliferating vermin —“and who knows if the herd will still be at the river where Brac found them.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc wisely refrained from reacting to Broud’s accusations; he could see in the dark faces of the other hunters that everyone agreed with him. He simply walked back to his own hearth.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I need some of my fire,” he explained at his mother’s stern glare. Somehow, they had never grown beyond their mother-son relationship, even when he became a man and was thus no longer under her authority.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">She quickly checked on his mate while he scooped some embers onto a deer scapula, but before he could rise to leave, he felt her hand on his arm. Surprised, he looked up.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“You know what he will say when I present the baby to him,” Uba signed quickly, making sure her hands were concealed from Broud’s eyes by Durc’s frame.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc’s gaze dropped to the softly glowing pieces of wood in his hands. He slowly put the scapula on the ground again so he could answer. “What can I do? If the child is deformed...”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“This would be the third child he condemns,” Uba interrupted him. “It won’t matter what it looks like. You know that.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud had declared that as the leader of their cave he wouldn’t tolerate any more deformed people; Durc remembered the outrage when Ura had joined them at the last Gathering. Broud had faced off with Brun over it, but Brun had made that arrangement for Durc when he had still been the leader, and for the sake of peace between their and Ura’s clan, Broud had to give in.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc and Ura had suffered for that defeat for a long time.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But Durc hadn’t thought that Broud’s decree would automatically condemn all of Ura’s children. True, she shared his hearth, and when his totem mixed with hers, her firstborn was inevitably a deformed child. But all the other men’s totems were pure Clan, and if one of theirs overcame Ura’s totem, surely the resulting child would be pure Clan, too? After all, the man’s totem was stronger than hers, or there wouldn’t be a child in the first place.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And the second child had seemed to be perfect; neither Durc nor Uba had seen any non-Clan deformities. Durc had fought hard for that child, not just for Ura's sake. It was a boy, and though he couldn't claim that his totem had overcome Ura's, it would still be a child of his hearth, someone he could train as a hunter, someone who'd take care of him and his mate in their old age. But Broud had decided that the boy was defective, and so the baby had been carried into the woods, and had never been mentioned again.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“You're right,” Durc admitted after a pause. “But again, what can I do? He is the leader, it’s his right...”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">“He's abusing the rights he’s given,” Uba said, and Durc blinked with surprise. It wasn’t like Uba to be so blunt, or to be so critical of any man, let alone of the leader. It wasn’t like </span> <em><span class="tm9">Clan</span> </em> <span class="tm8">.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Why does he hate her so?” Durc wanted to know. “She’s a good woman, and she stays out of his way.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“It’s not her he hates, but you... you remind him of your birth mother. Every time he looks at you, he sees her, and so his rage can never cool down. You know how the first thing he did when he became leader was to cast her out and have Mog-ur put the death curse on her.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Both made a sign to avert evil.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I think... I think Broud brought bad luck upon us when he cursed her.” Uba’s hands moved slowly, as if weighed down by the gravity of the accusation. “Everyone thought so,” she added, as if to bolster her argument.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Everyone thinks that it’s me,” Durc objected.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Broud has told them this over and over again, and it’s... it’s easier to side with him than against him. People need to trust their leader.” Uba cast a glance over his shoulder, then signed, “you need to leave before he starts wondering what’s taking you so long. But Durc — think about what I told you about leaving.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc shook his head, pausing halfway to picking up his embers again. “What, with a newborn in tow? And Ura still raw from giving birth?” He continued before Uba could answer. “Besides, have you ever wondered why the Others should accept us? We don’t look like them, either, we look too much like Clan, they’d chase us away! Should I make my own clan with Ura?” His gestures became fierce, chopping. “The Clan of Mixed Spirits.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He grabbed his coals and stalked to the entrance of the cave without looking back. He didn’t want to see what parting words Uba might have for him, although the moans coming from his hearthfire told him that she was probably busy with helping Ura now.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But he couldn’t stop thinking about their conversation, and about all the similar talks he’d had with her since the first child of his hearth had been carried into the woods. It haunted him all through the morning while he listened to his mate as she struggled to push a child into a world that would kill it shortly after it had taken its first breath; and he couldn’t decide which would be worse: a future where Broud would ceaselessly torment him, or a future that was unimaginable, as blank as the vast steppes to the north.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The day passed, achingly slow. After initial hesitation, the women had drifted in groups to Ura’s side, lending their support to her struggles. Broud’s sour mood and his altercation with their medicine woman aside, some traditions were too old and too strongly embedded in people’s memory to be ignored. The men had congregated at Vorn’s fire, and Durc studiously avoided looking in that direction to see what they were talking about. He had a pretty good idea about the conversation topic anyway.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He had stayed near the entrance of the cave all by himself, pretending to be completely caught up in building and tending to the fire of his temporary home. But anyone who bothered to look at him would’ve seen the tension in his shoulders. He was only too aware of the collective disapproval; everyone was blaming him for derailing the hunt.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He only turned his head to steal a glance at his own hearth now and then. His mate was still busy giving birth and wouldn’t be rushed, no matter how impatient the men were growing. How many children would Ura be able to give up before she’d follow them into the wilderness and seek out death in the form of any of the myriad of predators prowling the shadows, like Asa had done in that story that Uba loved to tell?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Maybe Uba loved to tell that story for a reason. Durc’s frown deepened as it suddenly dawned on him that his foster mother might have tried to warn him about his prospects if he insisted on staying with the clan.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">In private, Uba had told him directly that he had no future with them, not as long as Broud was leader, and that he shouldn’t count on outliving him — or that things would change once another man stepped up to the position. She had urged him many times to follow the example of his birth mother, to leave and find the Others; as her son, Uba insisted, he would certainly be accepted.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">His birth mother. Durc kept his eyes on the fire before him, but in his mind he tried to remember what she had looked like. He didn’t know if it was because of his mixed heritage, or because Clan memories were only embedded if they pertained to collective experiences, but he couldn’t picture his mother; he only had vague impressions of yellow-white hair, of their sound-making game, and of feelings of absolute bliss — of being loved... and of the deep pain when she left. </span> <em> <span class="tm9">If she loved me that much, </span> </em> <span class="tm8">he wondered, not for the first time, </span> <em> <span class="tm9">why didn’t she take me with her?</span> </em></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Because that would’ve been evil — a spirit snatching a child away to drag it to the spirit world with her. Uba had explained it to him over and over again when he was little.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ayla had defied Broud, Uba had told him once, under oath of secrecy. His birth mother had told Broud that she refused to die. Uba was convinced that she had gone and found the Others, just as their own mother Iza, medicine-woman-before-Uba, had told her to do.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><em> <span class="tm9">Just like Uba is telling me, </span> </em> <span class="tm8">Durc mused. </span> <em> <span class="tm9">If I left... if I found the Others... could it be she’d be there? Would she tell them to let me join them? Would she even recognize me?</span> </em></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><em> <span class="tm9">She probably wouldn’t tell them even if she did, </span> </em> <span class="tm8">he decided after a moment. </span> <em> <span class="tm9">If the Others accepted her, she wouldn’t do anything to endanger her position. She must know what it’s like to be rejected by one’s clan. She wouldn’t risk being cursed again because of me.</span> </em></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Like every time before, he arrived at the same conclusion: he had no idea where to look for the Others, and no hope of being accepted even if he found them. And if he had been completely honest with himself, the vast empty steppes scared him to death; the Clan lived in the forested hills and mountains at their southern border, only venturing into the empty lands a short distance to hunt bison and reindeer and horses, and on rare occasions, mammoths.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But they didn’t make their home there. They couldn’t. Their race had spent thousands of years adapting to living and hunting in woodlands, and had passed the point of redesign ages ago. They were strong, their legs able to catapult them into powerful sprints; but they weren’t able to run for days to tire out their prey. Their night vision was superior to that of the Others, adapted to the weaker light under a forest canopy, but that didn’t give them any advantage in the steppe.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Most importantly though, they had failed to claim the new environment when climate change had caused the steppes to grow, pushing back the forests; instead they had retreated into the shrinking pockets of their old habitat, losing contact with their clan brethren across the widening gulf of steppe. The resulting inbreeding in those pockets had made them vulnerable to all kinds of genetic hazards, from malformed bodies with heads that had grown too big to fit through the birth canal, to decreasing fertility. That a woman gave birth to three or more children, as Ura had, had become rare. If illness swept through a region, their numbers dwindled to such a degree that clans couldn’t recover.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The young hunter wasn’t conscious of the greater forces that condemned one half of his ancestors to extinction; but on some level, everyone had felt the portent of change when Ayla had crossed paths with them, and while Broud never came even close to the depth of understanding that Creb had reached, he reacted instinctively to the danger that she and her son embodied. They were the inheritors of the Earth; and Broud’s people were losing their grip on it.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc looked up from his fire when Uba subtly made her presence known at the edge of his vision. “Your mate has given birth,” she announced gravely.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc turned his head towards his hearth. The moans had stopped a while ago without him noticing.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">When he turned his gaze back to the medicine woman, she added, “Regrettably, it is only a girl.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">That comment was traditional, but Durc didn’t care about the child’s gender at the moment. “Is she deformed?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Uba hesitated. “Maybe you want to see for yourself.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc raised his brows, but as long as he didn’t look at or talk to his mate, he was safe from her woman’s curse. But if Uba wanted him to inspect the newborn, it didn’t bode well for the little girl. As Ura’s mate, he could speak for her nonetheless, but the final decision was Broud’s, and Durc already knew what his answer would be, so what was the point?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Heart pounding, he followed the medicine woman back to his hearth. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura was lying on her furs, head turned away so that she didn’t have to look at him, or at anyone else. Uba pulled the furs apart, and Durc bent forward to have a better look.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The child looked... hideous. It had no eye ridges, but a bulging forehead and a bony protrusion on its lower jaw. Durc absently touched his own chin as he stared at the tiny human’s face. He was overcome with a sense of numb defeat. Yet another child his mate would be forced to abandon. His hearth would stay empty. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Uba lightly touched his arm to get his attention, which wasn’t done, a woman had to wait for the man to give her the signal to speak; but she was acting in her role as medicine woman, and Durc felt like he was currently not quite right in the head, so maybe her gesture was appropriate.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">“This child,” Uba signed when he looked up, ”looks exactly like one of the Others. It looks... like the birth mother of the man of this hearth.” She leaned closer. “It is </span> <em> <span class="tm9">not </span> </em> <span class="tm8">deformed at all. But it’s not Clan. It’s one of the Others.”</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">With Durc and Ura both being of mixed heritage, their children would of course range in appearance from purely Clan to purely Others, to anything in between — but to a culture unaware of genetics, one that resorted to spiritual explanations for procreation, this wasn’t the most obvious conclusion.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Since not every copulation resulted in a pregnancy, the significance of intercourse wasn’t understood; sexual urges were not thought of differently than hunger or fatigue. Going hungry without eating resulted in weakness and eventual death; denying oneself, or being denied sleep resulted in exhaustion and, if pushed too far, breakdown. It was only logical to conclude that denying oneself relief of sexual urges was just as dangerous for a man’s strength and maybe even for his life. It didn’t automatically follow that it had anything to do with making offspring. Children grew in their mothers’ wombs like plants grew from the Earth; the question wasn’t what put them there, but what stirred them to wake up from their dormant state.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">The explanation the Clan had come up with was that it had to be some spiritual force — the man’s life force, guarded by his totem, had to overcome the woman’s naturally inert state, which was protected by </span> <em> <span class="tm9">her </span> </em> <span class="tm8">totem. In the Clan’s understanding, both Ura and Durc had been stirred into growing from their mothers’ wombs by a man’s totem — but in both cases, one of the totems belonged to a member of the Others. It had somehow contaminated the child — or in Durc’s case, his mother’s unusually strong and masculine totem had insisted on mixing his essence with the totem of the man of the Clan who had overcome it — and the result had to be some twisted, deformed creature; something unnatural.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc’s mother had defied Clan custom and insisted to keep the thing from her womb alive; Ura had been allowed to survive as punishment for her mother. Both were reviled by their respective clans, and Broud had made no secret of how abhorrent and nauseating and </span> <em> <span class="tm9">unnatural </span> </em> <span class="tm8">he found the result of that accidental confusion of totems.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">It stood to reason that any product of the union of already compromised spirits had to be even more deformed and vile; so Uba’s claim that the baby was purely Other, and not deformed at all, came as a shock to Durc. There were no pure spirits or totems of Others </span> <em> <span class="tm9">present! </span> </em> <span class="tm8">Both his own and Ura’s totems were mixed. The totems of all the other men in the clan were pure Clan totems.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <em> <span class="tm9">Where did that child of the Others come from??</span> </em>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I have to tell Broud,” Uba said, shaking Durc from his trance. Broud was already staring, Durc noticed, but was warily keeping his distance yet.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He returned his attention to the child, trying hard to remember his birth mother’s face. Uba had told him that Ayla had a bulging forehead, and no eye ridges, and that knobby protrusion that he also had on his lower jaw — but which Ura lacked. As he bent down even closer, Durc noticed something else: the girl’s eyes were blue.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His birth mother’s eyes had been blue. It was one of the few things he remembered about her.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">As he stared into the blue eyes of his mate’s daughter, Durc was overcome by a strange, fierce feeling he couldn’t identify. The baby had white hair — his mother’s hair had been yellow-white, like the grass in late summer.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">A shadow fell over both mother and child as Broud stepped between them and the hearth fire, dimming the striking yellow-white to dull ash. Durc glanced up into the leader’s face and started.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Never in his life had he seen the clan leader look so terrified.</span>
</p>
<hr/><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud was looming over him, and the feeling in Durc congealed into a physical sensation — a painful clenching in his chest, as if Broud had his heart in his fist and was squeezing it so hard that it couldn’t beat anymore.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The last two times, Broud had just made some dismissive and contemptuous remarks about hideous deformations that he didn’t tolerate in his clan, and gone into a rant about leader-before-him making foolish decisions about deformed people being allowed to live among them, and about the predictable results of such foolishness. So far, none of the other women had produced a deformed child, but their mates took great care to keep them as far away from Durc as possible to avoid any accidental attacks from his totem on them, a practice that Broud expressly encouraged.<br/>
</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">This time, however, Broud had gone completely still as he stared at the child. Durc watched him, unable to look away, feeling something build up in and around his leader that made his aching heart stumble and all the hairs on his body stand on end. It was like sensing a lightning storm approach, or facing down a mountain lion or a wooly rhinoceros.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Wooly Rhinoceros was Broud’s totem, Durc remembered distantly; it was here now, filling the whole cave with its red-eyed rage.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">For Broud, a nightmare had stepped from his dreams into the sanctuary of his home. For years he had blamed every streak of bad luck on Durc; because Durc was deformed, because his birth mother hadn’t had a mate when he was born, and everyone knew that this meant the child would be bad luck for all his life.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But in his heart, Broud had always been convinced that his clan was haunted by the vengeful spirit of Ayla — Ayla who had told him that she refused to go into the spirit world after he had Goov put the death curse on her. Ayla who had tricked him into acknowledging her, and thus confirming her presence. And somehow, her presence had never left. No matter that he moved his clan into a different cave each spring, it seemed that bad weather, illness, and death followed them wherever they went. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The old people had looked at him, and he had seen how they held him responsible; they had thought that Ayla had brought luck to them while she was still living among them. And the earthquake right after Goov had pronounced her cursed had solidified their belief that Broud’s hatred had angered her totem, the mighty Cave Lion, and maybe some other spirits, too.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Over the years, Broud had managed to shift the blame completely to Durc; it had helped that the old generation had died off one by one. Now the only ones remembering the events of that day had no reason — or in the women’s case, no right — to talk about it. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But now! Now Ayla’s ghost had not only found them yet again, it had taken on a body and become solid. How powerful must a spirit be that it could take on its old body again? It looked exactly as it had been before! The hair, the face, the eyes — it was purely Other, while no totem of the Others had been around! Oh, the evil witchery it was now going to let loose on him!</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Broud’s terrified mind latched onto the only possible solution: The thing was only a weak worm right now, an infant that hadn’t even suckled the first sip of mother’s milk to give it strength. It could be destroyed now — this was an opportunity to get rid of it once and for all!</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc gaped as with a roar, Broud grabbed one of the rocks surrounding his hearth fire and raised it over his head.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Then he understood.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And he lunged.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Had he been able to form a thought, he’d have stopped himself. No man of the Clan attacked another; no man ever lost control over his emotions like that. There were no open rebellions against leadership, only a loss of trust, a loss of support, a distancing, and most leaders found a way to die honorably during a hunt then, to restore their honor and enter the spirit world with their standing intact. A leader who carried on without the spiritual buoyancy of his men’s loyalty wouldn’t fare well in the spirit world.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But Durc wasn’t thinking at all in that moment — if Wooly Rhinoceros was in the cave, so was Gray Wolf now, and Wolf always defends his pack. His mate. The cubs of his mate.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">With a growl, Durc collided with Broud and the impact threw Broud to the ground, outside the hearth stones, away from Ura and the baby.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They fought, while the rest of the clan looked on in frozen horror. Broud was a lot stronger than Durc, and fuelled by superstitious fear and hatred, but Durc was possessed by the power of his totem, and for a timeless moment, the men were about even in their ferocity.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">In the end, though, Broud’s superior strength won out. He had managed to position himself on top of Durc, smashing his head against the rock floor, and Durc was flailing helplessly, his consciousness dimming. He was going to die, and through the bloodied haze, he knew that Broud would kill the child and cast out Ura, condemning her to perish in the wilderness.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His blindly grasping hands closed around the rock that Broud had wielded to bash the baby’s head in. He picked it up without thinking, smashed it against Broud’s temple with all his remaining strength.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And Broud toppled.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">As thick as Clan skulls were, the temple was a weak spot, just as it is in a modern human’s skull. The bone is thin there, and easily cracked.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc slowly, painfully, sat up. His head was pounding, and the cave was wavering as if it was bobbing on the surface of a lake. He wiped the blood from his eyes and looked around.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The silence around him was palpable. Broud lay beside him, unmoving, and for a fleeting moment, Durc saw a dead rhino in his place.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Panic rose in him. No matter if he had killed Broud or not, his own life was forfeit; as soon as Broud woke up, he’d tell the mog-ur to lay the death curse on him, and rightfully so. And if he didn’t wake up, Vorn would order it, Broud’s second-in-command.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Uba broke the spell as she hurried to Broud’s side, examining him, and the clan’s collective attention shifted to her. After a moment she straightened. “He is alive,” she told the mog-ur, “only stunned from the blow.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">A breath of relief filled the cave; but Durc didn’t join in. This changed nothing — he had still attacked the clan leader, and everyone had seen with their own two eyes that he had tried to kill him.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He had tried to kill Broud. The realization had him reeling.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Go to your hearthfires and stay there,” Goov had suddenly found his hands again. “Let the medicine woman do her work. I will plead with the spirits to protect him.” He gestured at Vorn and Brac to carry Broud back to his own hearth.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Uba hurried to Durc. “You need to leave right away! Before any of them regain their wits!”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc nodded, still stunned. “What about Ura and the baby? She’s... there’s this woman’s curse...”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">“You already ignored so many taboos today, one more can’t make things any worse,” Uba cut him off. “If you don’t take them with you, they will die. You have to decide </span> <em> <span class="tm9">now.”</span> </em></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc nodded again; words failed him right now.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Meet me later at the river shore, at the dead willow tree,” Uba advised him. “I’ll bring some herbs for Ura... I need to take care of Broud now. Go!”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc finally found control of his limbs again; while all eyes were riveted on Uba and Broud, he quickly and silently roused Ura, grabbed the bundle with his hunting gear and supplies that he had intended to take with him on the bison hunt, and led his mate and her baby out of the cave.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura was unsteady on her feet; she would never make it to his hiding spot. Durc shoved his spears into her hands — what did it matter if her women’s curse contaminated them, he was dead anyway, they were all dead — and scooped her into his arms. She couldn’t walk the distance, not after just having given birth, and what was worse, she was still bleeding and would lay a fine trail for the hunters to follow.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Yes, he was touching her. She was smearing her curse all over him.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Considering that Mog-ur would cast the Death Curse on him, Durc thought darkly, Ura’s curse was nothing more than a nuisance.</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Chapter 3</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Both Ura and the newborn stayed blessedly silent when Durc carried them away from the cave. With Ura, it was probably shock; Durc had no idea why the baby didn’t cry, but secretly thanked the totems for it. He was still too shocked himself to think straight; he only knew he had to put some distance between them and the hunters, and go into hiding.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His hunting cave was no more than a nook in the rock, not suited for permanent settlement, and not providing space for more than one or two people, if they squeezed together, but it was deep enough to be a shelter against the weather and hidden behind a bramble hedge, so he was reasonably sure that none of the other hunters was even aware of its existence. He had only discovered it himself when he had followed a rabbit that he had injured with his bola.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He sat Ura down and proceeded to light a fire from the embers of their old hearth. He could feel his mate shaking, whether from cold, or fear, or shock, he couldn’t say — maybe from all three. He didn’t blame her, but when the baby started wailing, all he could think of was a rough command to feed it to shut it up. Ura obeyed without a word, and for a moment, Durc forgot to move as he stared at the tiny being suckling at his mate’s breast. It was the first time Ura had been allowed to nurse one of her children.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc drew a deep breath and returned his attention to the fire.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">If they survived this ordeal, this child would be the first of his hearth to walk, he thought, the first of his hearth to learn the tasks and duties of a woman.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But nobody of the Clan would ever say her name. No mog-ur would determine her totem. She wouldn’t receive the piece of painted ochre so that her totem could find her. She would be without luck. How could she survive then, mother’s milk or not?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He jumped to his feet, unable to sit still as fresh despair churned in his chest. “Stay,” he signed to Ura. “Make sure the child stays silent.” He didn’t bother to tell her where he was going — that wasn’t something that ever crossed the mind of a man from the Clan.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">It occurred to him that the river was not the best choice for a meeting place; the running water would muffle any sound of approaching hunters. But he hadn’t been in his right mind, and had let Uba make the choice. For a moment, he wavered, at the brink of retracing his steps back to his cave. But he needed Uba’s herbs and instructions for his mate if he wanted to keep her alive.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He’d also have needed Mog-ur’s help to keep the evil spirits at bay that were lured to their fire by the scent of Ura’s cursed blood, but he doubted that Goov was currently working on that kind of magic.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The moon had long set, and Durc could sense dawn approaching when the medicine woman finally appeared at the river bank. She was walking hunched over — but then Durc saw that she was carrying a big collecting basket; when she put it on the ground before him with a thump, he realized that it was heavy because it was filled with everything Uba could think of they might need. Everyone had to have been terribly distracted for her to manage to pack up so many things and vanish from the cave without being questioned or stopped, he thought — distracted or beside themselves from shock.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">A lot of it was food — he could smell it — but he hoped that Uba had also put his and Ura’s tools in it, and the scraps of fur that his mate had wanted to sew together for a winter wrap. There was not enough light and not enough time to check, though; he just had to trust his mother. She was handing him another package now, and then drew her gestures on his chest, so that he could feel the words.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“These are the herbs that will help stop Ura’s bleeding, and make her milk flow,” Uba signed hastily. “She must steep them in hot water, and drink a cup of it three times a day.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc nodded and closed his hand tightly around the herb package. He wanted to say something, but had no idea what.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Uba didn’t seem to notice. “Broud hasn’t woken up yet,” she continued. “You hit him good. But the longer he is sleeping, the smaller the chance is that he will wake up again.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Now Durc found words at last. “Will he die?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Only the spirits know,” Uba signed. “I have done all I could — now it’s Mog-ur’s battle.” She grabbed his arms. “The other men are already talking about going out to find you and bring you back. You must leave at once! Go north, and west, to where the Others are — the hunters won’t follow you there.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Ura can’t walk yet,” Durc protested. “We need to wait a few days until she is better. I can’t carry her the whole way.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“When they find you, they will drag you back so that Mog-ur can punish you,” Ura said. “What will become of Ura and her baby then?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“They won’t find us,” Durc declared. “And we will leave as soon as possible.” </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Uba’s hands were on his arms again, and with a sudden pain, Durc realized that she was about to say goodbye. They would never see each other again. He grasped her arms, too, and for a moment, they stood frozen, too overwhelmed by grief to say anything.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Then Uba stepped back, and in the faint light of dawn, Durc saw her making the sign that said, “Go with Ursus.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The gesture enclosed all of them — him, Ura, and the little nameless, luckless girl for whom he had forsaken his home and his future with the only people he knew as his own.</span>
</p><hr/><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">For the next few days, Durc and Ura stayed in their hiding place, constantly expecting the shadow of a hunter to block out the weak light from the entrance. They didn’t talk with each other; even under normal circumstances, conversation topics between men and women were limited, and Durc had a lot to think about, which he didn’t even consider sharing with his mate.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura busied herself with the child, who continued to alternately sleep and suckle at her breasts. She was probably trying to honor her woman’s curse by isolating herself as much as possible, especially after Durc had told her not to bother with preparing food for him. He could provide for himself just fine, something that no pure Clan man was able to; one of the few perks of being of mixed spirits. They both looked content, Durc thought; leaving the fretting about the future to the man of the hearth.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Which was only natural, of course; but he wished he’d have someone to share his worries with. Their new reality as outcasts was crashing over him in waves of panic between lulls of numb denial. Despite Uba’s talk about following in his birth mother’s footsteps and seeking out the Others, Durc had never seriously considered leaving; and while he could list a number of reasons why it wasn’t feasible to leave, the underlying truth was that he simply couldn’t imagine a future where he didn’t live with the clan. They were his people, the only family he had ever known, and contrary to their adoption of Ayla, they had always seen him as one of them from the beginning. His problems with the other members of Broud’s clan had stemmed from Broud’s deflection of his bad luck on him, not from the fundamental differences between the two sibling races.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He had learned to navigate Broud’s temper; or so he had thought. What he hadn’t taken into account was his own temper, and that Broud would one day succeed in pushing him to the breaking point. Now that point had been reached, and everything had irrevocably changed.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Where would they go now? Durc watched as a sharp wind tore yellow leaves from the trees and hurled them to the ground. Winter was fast approaching, and they had nothing — no cave, no stored food... no community that helped and protected each other, and provided the reassuring presence of other people. Durc swallowed down another wave of panic. Ura was still too weak to travel, and the child... it was too young, too fragile to survive a journey, especially in this weather.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They would die; Broud had won.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">In the distance, a wolf began to howl; it made Durc remember the last day of his normal life, when he had faced off with the pack at the river, and had been gifted a deer. They were still eating from that deer’s meat — Uba had stuffed as many of the dried slices as possible into the basket — , which allowed them not to touch any of the travel food Uba had packed for them. Maybe his totem had chased that deer into his trap exactly for that reason.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Thoughts of his totem directed his mind back to his fight with Broud. Like most men of the Clan, Durc was content to leave spiritual matters to the mog-ur, save for some fundamental knowledge about the totems and basic rituals to placate them. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that the totems had been very present during that fight, and that maybe Gray Wolf approved of his reaction. Wolves did protect their pack.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Wolves also expelled a member of their pack sometimes. Maybe Wolf agreed with Uba, and thought that Durc didn’t fit in with his current pack anymore. Some wolves were loners, fending for themselves, or founding a new pack if they managed to find a mate.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc squeezed his eyes shut and impatiently shook his head. He was no mog-ur, and he shouldn’t make bold assumptions about his totem’s intentions. Maybe Gray Wolf </span> <em> <span class="tm9">didn’t </span> </em> <span class="tm8">approve, and he had been nothing but a hot-headed fool whose shameful loss of self-control had condemned both himself and his mate to a lonely death in the wilderness.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He had no idea if they had already passed the time when a child couldn’t be cast out anymore; contrary to the last mog-ur, Goov had never considered sharing his knowledge of numbers — or any other mog-ur knowledge, for that matter — with anyone. Had Durc known how to count, the seven-days-rule would’ve given him an arbitrary, but at least specific deadline for making a decision. As it was, he was waffling day after day, torn between waiting for both his mate and her child to get stronger, and his sense of the rapidly worsening weather making their journey more dangerous.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The decision arrived, quite unexpectedly, on the day he decided to go out and hunt some small game. The last deer meat had been eaten the night before, and he was loathe to touch any of the pemmikan his mother had given him — those packages were meant as a last resort when they were out in the steppes, looking for the Others. He was aware of the dangers — the hunters were probably still looking for him — but he also thought that he couldn’t stand staying in the cramped space of the cave any longer.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He ran into Grev on his way back to the cave, two rabbits tied to his waist. Grev stopped in his tracks, but both men stood frozen, too surprised to flee, too surprised to attack. They stared at each other across the small brook Durc had been about to wade through.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They had been close once; almost like brothers. But over time, Grev had carefully put a safe distance between himself and Durc. Durc couldn’t blame him for it — to be friends with him meant incurring Broud’s wrath.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">It had still hurt.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They were still staring at each other, both of them unsure what to do next. It was Durc who finally found the strength to move. “Don’t you want to call the others?” he challenged Grev. “They must be tired of looking for me by now.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Grev didn’t answer immediately. When he did, his hands moved slowly. “Broud still hasn’t woken up. Vorn is leader until he does.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc sucked in an uneasy breath. “So he waits for Broud to wake up and tell Mog-ur to curse me?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Grev shrugged. “He hasn’t told me what he intends to do.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Including what to do with him when they caught him, Durc concluded.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">After another moment of silence, Grev asked, “Why are you still here? You can’t come back.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I know,” Durc signed. “We will leave for good as soon as Ura is fit to travel.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Don’t wait too long,” Grev warned him. “Vorn is turning every stone to find you.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Well, you found me,” Durc stated matter-of-factly.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Yes,” Grev said, but didn’t make a move to restrain him; nor did he call out for the other hunters.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Another uncomfortable silence. Durc shifted on his feet. “So?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Droog used to say that bad luck has been with us since Broud cursed the woman who gave birth to you,” Grev said after another long silence. “He said the totems have been angry at Broud ever since that day. Maybe his bad luck has finally caught up with him. Maybe... maybe it’ll die with him.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“You better don’t talk like that in front of the others,” Durc said, shocked.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Grev shrugged again. “I don’t. Droog got away with it because he was old, and Brun was still alive then. But I think when you’ll have left, all that strange luck that the woman who gave birth to you brought to the clan will leave with you. And that will be good. Things will be again the way they should be.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Suddenly Durc understood that Grev feared that dragging him back to the cave, and taking out the men's wrath on him, would invoke another streak of bad luck. There was no telling which spirits had attached themselves to his birth mother and him; the clan’s safest bet was to distance themselves as much as possible from them.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Maybe leaving had been inevitable from the beginning. It was just the logical consequence of a lifetime of distancing themselves from him.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He nodded. “We will leave, I promise.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Grev nodded, too, turned away without another word, and vanished into the underbrush. Durc stared at the spot for a moment, unable to form a coherent thought. Then he slowly turned away, too, and walked in the opposite direction, back to where Ura was waiting for his return.</span>
</p><hr/><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc had decided that they would leave when the moon was full; it was an arbitrary choice, but he felt that he needed </span> <span class="tm9">some </span> <span class="tm8">visible marker that would signal their departure. He didn’t bother to announce his decision to Ura beforehand — there wasn’t anything to prepare, since she was still under her woman’s curse, and there was nothing to pack, since everything they would take with them had already been stowed away in Uba’s collecting basket. Durc would be carrying their fire and his weapons, and Ura would carry the basket and the child.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">So he was taken aback when his mate objected to their immediate departure when he did finally announce it.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“What about my daughter?” Ura asked. She still didn’t look directly at him, and even her signs were directed only vaguely in his direction. Under normal circumstances, they wouldn’t have interacted at all until her curse had passed. Durc had idly wondered when he would begin to notice the effects of her curse on him.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">On the other hand, if mog-ur had already cursed him, he probably wouldn’t notice the weaker curse at all.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Right now, he was too perplexed to waste any thoughts at curses. “What about her?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura’s fingers twitched nervously, before they formed intelligible words. “She still doesn’t have a name.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc paused. That was true, and it was a problem.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Names weren’t a trivial matter. They were more than just identifying labels — that was just their purpose in this world. The more important significance was held in the spiritual world; a name was the embodiment of a person’s essence. It was inextricably linked with the naming ceremony where the child received its medicine bag with a piece of sacred ochre, which enabled the totems to find the human in order to protect them; and in the minds of the Clan, the name and the piece of ochre had almost become one and the same thing — a concrete manifestation of that name. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The act of naming was thus a grave and portentous undertaking — which meant it was the sole responsibility of the mog-ur. People could suggest names, but the decision lay with a clan’s magician; he was the only one who could judge a name’s appropriateness and its standing in the spirit world.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I can’t name her,” Durc protested. “I’m not Mog-ur.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“But she can’t live without a name!” Ura pointed out. “A name and a medicine bag — how else is her totem going to find her?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc drew a deep breath. Without their mog-ur, finding the girl’s totem was as impossible as finding her name. But without a name and the protection of her totem...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">... she had lived more than the seven days, however long that span was; Durc was reasonably sure of that. She had lived beyond that limit, and she had been given her mother’s milk, and carrying her into the woods was now completely out of the question. But taking her along without a name? They would have a raving mass of evil spirits nipping at their heels. The thought made the hairs on his neck stand on end.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I need to think,” he signed curtly and stepped out of the cave.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Everyone in the Clan had a general understanding of the spirit world; it was necessary in order to behave correctly and avoid angering or insulting them. Durc knew that totems were only a small part of the spirit world, even if they were the most important for the Clan. But the stories told of other spirits, too — evil spirits who were eager to drink a man’s blood or his life essence, or to stir up trouble among people, or to bring sickness and bad luck. Likewise, there existed benign spirits who were drawn by the light of a hearth fire, and who loved to congregate around it like moths, bringing a measure of protection. It was one of the reasons why the Clan was careful to never let their fire go out completely, even when they were migrating to another cave.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But once he and Ura were travelling, those hearth spirits would lose track of them. Only the totems were able to be on the move with the Clan, although they, too, preferred to have a permanent home. As soon as their journey for the Others began, Durc and Uba would be under the protection of Gray Wolf and Snow Goose; but the little girl would be fair game for any life-sucking spirit floating in the branches of an alder tree, or hovering above the damp, moss-covered hollows under the brambles, or... there were too many spots to think of them all; evil spirits were as unavoidable as the clouds of mosquitos in summer.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc didn’t want these demonic forces to attack his mate’s child; the very thought made him nauseous. But he also didn’t want himself or Ura to come to these forces’ attention. There was no way around it: the child needed a name. And there was no one around to name her except him.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc tiredly rubbed his face. How was he supposed to find the </span> <em> <span class="tm9">right </span> </em> <span class="tm8">name? He had no way of determining whether his choice was right. He’d never even been curious to learn about these things, and now he was suddenly asked to perform the rites of a mog-ur? For that matter, how was he supposed to learn the child’s totem? It was impossible.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And yet. He had to try. He had thought through the consequences of not naming her, and had found them unacceptable, so there was no point in going over all of this again. Durc remembered his first sight of the child — how her hair and eyes had reminded him of her birth mother. Uba had confirmed that she was one of the Others, as inconceivable as that still was; and Broud’s reaction... it was as if he had thought that his birth mother’s vengeful spirit had come back for real.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><em> <span class="tm9">Could </span> </em> <span class="tm8">she be her? Did people return from the spirit world to be born again into this world? Durc frowned as he tried to remember if Goov had ever mentioned something like this, but came up empty. Personally, Durc couldn’t see a reason why not — the people being born had to come from somewhere after all, and where else would they come from but from the spirit world?</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Which prompted the next question: why </span> <em> <span class="tm9">had </span> </em> <span class="tm8">she come back? If vengeance on the clan that had expelled her had been her reason, that had been thwarted right away.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Maybe she had come back for him?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc rejected that thought at once. His mother had had the opportunity to take him with her back then; but as Uba had assured him, Ayla had left him with the clan because she had believed that it was safer for him, and that he’d have a home with them. Durc wondered how she could have deluded herself like that — surely she had known Broud and his penchant for holding on to petty grudges and his enjoyment of cruelty?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But he did like the sound of her name, and if the child was one of the Others, and was meant to live with the Others, she shouldn’t have a Clan name, anyway. He turned around and stepped back into the cave.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I have decided,” he signed to his mate. “The child’s name will be Ayla.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura radiated relief. She reached into the folds of her wrap where the baby was snuggled against her breast. “I made this for her,” she said shyly.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc stared at the round piece of leather, meant to enclose the sacred ochre, in her hand. Did she... did she expect him to enact a naming ceremony?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Well, of course she did. You could call a person all manner of things; that didn’t make any difference in the spirit world. Without the ceremony, a name was meaningless. But with the wrong ceremony — and it would be wrong, with him mimicking the gestures of the mog-ur, ignorant of their meaning — he could call down the wrath of spirits he didn’t even know of.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“I don’t mean that you should pretend to be Mog-ur,” Ura answered his unspoken thoughts. His horror must’ve shown clearly in his face. “But you could perhaps just ask for the spirits to protect her? Everyone is allowed to ask for their protection.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc drew a deep breath and nodded. A certain numbness had set in — they would probably die on the journey anyway, they were probably already under the mog-ur’s death curse, he had been living with his birth mother’s bad luck as long as he remembered...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">... what was one more break with tradition?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ochre. They needed a piece of ochre, he remembered that much. For the totem, which he had no way of finding...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">It was then that he was struck by a sudden inspiration. Maybe his totem had sent it, or maybe this ability to make leaps of intuition was the inheritance of his birth mother’s people. Durc opened his amulet and broke off a tiny chunk of his own piece of ochre. He motioned to Ura to present the baby to him, and she obeyed, her face a mixture of dread and anticipation — a mirror to his own upheaval.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc remembered from the naming ceremonies that the child’s face was marked with a paste of ochre. In another strike of improvisation, he used the cut-off piece of ochre like a crayon, lightly tracing the girl’s face from forehead to the tip of her nose. “The girl’s name is Ayla,” he pronounced; and maybe it was just his imagination, fuelled by the dread of violating an ancient taboo, but the air in the cave was suddenly heavy, alive with unseen presences.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc felt goosebumps race over his body; across him, Ura shuddered.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The atmosphere was expectant, but not hostile, it seemed to him. Still it took him a moment to gather his courage. He had once faced down a raging bison and hadn’t felt as scared as he felt now.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“This man is honored by the presence of the totems,” he began haltingly — was he assuming too much already? Were they really here? He wasn’t a mog-ur; he couldn’t tell.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He ploughed on regardless. “This man is no mog-ur and begs forgiveness for calling on the spirits like this; but the child of this man’s mate is in need of protection, and the man could see no other way. The mog-ur has cast out this man and his mate, maybe deservedly so. But the man still begs the spirits to have mercy on the child.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He had to stop; his hands were shaking. “This man wants to ask his own totem Gray Wolf, and the totem of his mate, Snow Goose, to watch over and to protect the child, until a mog-ur can determine the child’s totem,” he concluded. Moving his hands in the old, voiceless language of the Clan had become harder and harder, until the air seemed to be solid rock. Maybe the totems wanted him to shut up. He was glad to oblige.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc handed the piece of ochre to Ura and fled the cave.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Outside, he had to sit down for a moment, because his knees were buckling. A cold gust of wind made him shudder; he only now realized that his whole body was drenched with sweat. The enormity of his action came crashing over him, and he fought to resist the urge to curl up and hide his head in his arms like a toddler.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Instead he began to walk away from the cave, with no specific destination in mind; he just needed to walk off the tension. It was early morning, and the rising sun and setting moon were both still visible, hanging low over the eastern and western horizon.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">A raven cawed, but Durc paid it no heed. His attention was divided between scanning for signs and sounds of the hunters nearby, and his own doubts about the naming ceremony he had just improvised. Had he just insulted his own totem by asking it to conspire with him? Had he been right to do so?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Yes, he decided. There had been no other way. After he had broken with everything he knew to save the life of the child, he couldn’t have abandoned her like that.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His eyes fell upon something small and white in the moss. It was a tooth, by the shape of it, the tooth of a predator. After turning it in his fingers and looking at it some more, Durc thought that it looked like a milk tooth... a wolf’s tooth. That was unusual; Durc didn't know that wolf cubs usually just swallowed their milk teeth when the permanent teeth pushed them out, but he did remember that he had only ever seen them when he had come across a whole skull. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The world stopped for a moment, or maybe his heart did. If this wasn’t a sign from his totem...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Most clan people had only that piece of ochre in their amulet pouch, and in case of the men, the piece of reddened mammoth tooth they received in their hunting ceremony. Only medicine women and mog-urs collected more items in it on a regular basis; for normal people, getting a token of their totem’s approval was a once-in-a-lifetime event.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc’s breath left him in a rush. He was on his knees again, still clutching the tooth.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Maybe they would survive after all.</span>
</p><p class="Normal"> </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Chapter 4</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">The next morning woke them with a gust of cold air, and Durc thought he could smell snow in it. He sat up with a sudden sense of urgency; it was time to leave. They had spent too much time in his hideaway, caught up in the shock over his violent fall-out with Broud, Ura’s woman’s curse, and the spiritual repercussions of their exile.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">The planet didn’t care about any of this; it continued its path around its star, tilting its axis away from the life-giving warmth of the sun and plunging the world into the long, dark, deadly months of winter. Durc stared into the blueish darkness outside their fire while Ura prepared Uba's tea for herself, battling down the urge to burrow deeper into their little cave and wait for spring.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">They couldn’t stay here. The cave was too shallow to protect them from the elements when winter would truly come, and he’d run into the hunters of his old cave if he tried to hunt in the woods. If Mog-ur had put the death curse on him, they’d think his ghost was haunting them — his presence might even drive them from their cave; and while Durc didn’t really care anymore what would happen to some of the men if they tried to find a new cave in the middle of winter, he didn’t want his mother to suffer, or any of the children.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">He half-turned to his mate. “Gather our things after we’ve eaten,” he said gruffly. “We’ll leave today.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Ura nodded, but when she raised the cup to her mouth, her hands were shaking. Durc couldn’t scold her for her apprehension. Traveling in this weather, in their state, their chances of survival were dire.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">He felt a wave of resigned acceptance wash over him. As far as his people were concerned, he was already dead. Every day he lived on was an unexpected gift.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">If only he didn’t have a mate and a baby with him; giving up would be so much easier then.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“I have thought about where we will go,” he signed. Ura looked up in surprise; usually the men didn’t share their plans and considerations with the women. They wouldn’t be able to understand half of it, was the accepted assumption, and contribute even less, and while she was under the women's curse after giving birth, no man should've even looked at her, much less talked to her. But Durc had nobody else to share his ruminations with, and he absolutely needed to talk this out. It helped him think.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">So he continued, “They say that the Others live up North, in the empty lands, but winter is coming quickly, and we won’t find any shelter there. Winter will find us before we find the Others.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm7">“But we can’t go South or East, because that is where the Clan lives, and they have...” He hesitated. Ura didn’t know about his talk with Grev, about the possibility that Mog-ur had cursed him. </span> <em> <span class="tm8">He </span> </em> <span class="tm7">didn’t know if he was cursed, and that ignorance protected him from giving the fact away with his body language; but if Ura learned about it, she might look at him as cursed and dead, an evil ghost sharing her campfire. She wouldn’t accept him as her mate anymore, and he wouldn’t be able to protect her and care for her. Without a man to hunt and provide for her, she would die, and the baby with her. He’d have defied Broud for nothing.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“They wouldn’t accept the baby any more than Broud has,” he concluded. “She doesn’t even look half-Clan.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">If Ura suspected that this wasn’t the whole truth, she didn't say anything. It wouldn’t even occur to her to probe him for more information. In fact, she looked a bit overwhelmed by his untypical verbosity.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Then she surprised him. “So we will go West? But will we find any Others if we stay in the forests? Don’t they all live out on the plains?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Maybe they did. Durc had no idea. But it didn’t befit a man to admit ignorance to a woman. “It’s more important to survive the winter than to find the Others,” he said. “They will still be there in spring, but we may not if we’re not careful.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Ura acquiesced to that, and they finished their meal in silence .</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Packing was a matter of mere moments — they had almost nothing to call their own. Ura rolled up their furs and stowed her cooking utensils into Uba’s collecting basket, while Durc carefully scooped the glowing embers of their hearth fire into the deer antler that he had hollowed out at the base. Since it was from the deer that the wolf pack had chased into his trap, Durc hoped that Gray Wolf would protect the fire he carried in it.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">He had also cut off a tip of the antler, drilled a hole in it, and was now wearing it on a string around his neck. While it didn’t deserve going into his medicine bag, he had come to view the deer and all its parts as being blessed by Gray Wolf, and he wanted to carry some token of its luck with him. They could use all the luck they could get, now.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">And then it was suddenly time to leave. Durc cast one last critical look at Uba, who carried both the baby and all of their supplies in the basket on her back, but she seemed to be fine; strong-boned, hardy, endurant. She would walk hundreds of miles despite having recently given birth.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">As for himself, Durc quickly ran through his own tools — hunting spears, knife, and bola; a stone ax, his flint-knapping tools; and most importantly, the antler with the glowing coals that would build their hearth fire every day.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Those were the weapons they brought to the fight with the elements — all that stood between them and the vast wilderness that had born them. Durc looked up into the overcast sky; the icy breath of the glacier up north tugged at his hair and his fur wrap.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">He gripped the spear harder and drew a deep breath. Then, without looking back once, he began walking away from the cave, Ura at his heels.</span>
</p><hr/><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">They moved westward across the peninsula, staying close to the shore of the inland sea. Durc knew that at some point he’d have to veer towards the empty lands in the north if he wanted to find the Others, but couldn’t bring himself to do so yet; as long as they had the familiar sound of the surf to their left, even if they couldn’t see the water, he didn’t feel so lost. Close to the sea, the weather was still warmer than on the inland prairies of the peninsula, and the denser forests and bushland provided better opportunities for a lone hunter than the open steppe.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Their progress was vexingly slow. Ura was not yet recovered enough to be able to keep up with the fast pace of a hunting party that Durc tried to set, and Durc didn’t dare to continue walking during the night to make up for that, for fear of predators attacking his mate as easy prey; it was safer to keep them at bay with a fire. He tried to rely on his bola for hunting, but when luck deserted him, he was forced to set traps and wait for them to fill (which they sometimes didn’t).</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Their meat now came mostly from small game like hamsters, birds, and rabbits, but they also didn't scorn lizards, frogs, grubs, or locusts. Ura tried to add plants to their meals, but since she was still under the women’s curse, Durc couldn’t accept any of it, and she had to eat it herself. Good for her, Durc thought; she was nursing a child, she needed all the food she could get. He wished he knew what plants his mate was harvesting, but he avoided talking to her  as much as possible while she was under the curse, and he probably wouldn’t have been able to identify them even if she had been allowed to describe them to him. As much as his mixed heritage gave him greater flexibility than a purely-Clan man, it couldn’t replace experience; and he didn’t have the Clan women’s memories to make up for it.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Overall, though, neither of them lacked protein or vitamins with their diet, and some of the small mammals had already acquired a modest amount of fat in preparation for the coming winter. For the first weeks of their journey, Durc dared to hope that they might survive long enough to find shelter, with the Others or maybe even with some distant clan.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">But all the while he couldn’t help but notice the shortening days and the accompanying drop in temperature. Soon the mornings greeted them with a thin layer of ice on the shallow puddles of water, and a white dusting of frost on the grass. Both melted during the day, and the afternoons were pleasantly warm, but the warning signs were unmistakable. The lizards and frogs vanished, as did hamsters and other hibernating animals. They all felt the approach of the deadly season.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Durc found himself scanning his surroundings for a cave; although he and Ura had almost no provisions, he was willing to take his chances and burrow in over the winter, and use ice and snow to build traps for bigger game. It was less insane than trying to find other people in this vast, empty landscape. But what they found wasn't suited to get them over the winter; and even if he had found a suitable cave, there wouldn't have been sufficient time to collect and store enough food anymore.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">So they kept moving westward, with no clear destination in mind; Durc wondered how the Others survived that season out in the steppes. Without mountains, there were no caves; and though he and Ura used his hide shelter when the weather turned bad, it wasn’t adequate for hibernating. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine anyone surviving out there, with the storms from the glacier hurling ice and snow across the land. It made him queasy just to think about it. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">He had no idea what Ura kept herself busy with, but it didn’t occur to him to ask. If she was afraid, she didn’t show it, like the good woman she was. More probably, she simply left those worries and responsibilities to the man of the hearth.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Although she never complained, Durc noticed that she was getting thinner, despite his best efforts to provide for her. Nursing the baby on top of walking all day, every day, was eating up her reserves. And though he wasn’t too sure about these things, he thought that the baby was getting fussier by the day, too. It made hunting more difficult — if he kept them close by, the restless child chased the game away, but if he left them behind at their camp fire, he was distracted by the thought of predators dragging both his mate and the baby away while he was gone. He had never wasted a thought at what dangers might lurk around the cave for the women that were left behind when all the men went out to hunt big game, but he could appreciate now how there had been safety in numbers. And the old men who weren’t fit to go with the hunters could still wield a spear or a club against an intruder.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Now it was only him. He had thought he’d been an outcast in Broud’s clan. He’d had no idea.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">When they passed a long bay formed by the southern coast of the mainland and the northwestern flank of the peninsula, he knew they had left the old familiar territory behind for good. It filled him with a strange melancholy, as if he was saying goodbye to his mother a second time. He had no idea what the landscape would look like further west, but his Clan memories provided a disorienting sense of déa vu: this had been Clan territory once, before the new people had trickled in from the South when the great forests had given way to the steppes.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Their westward journey was unexpectedly rerouted when they reached a large river — too large to wade through it. The Clan couldn't swim, and so it had also never occurred to them to invent tools that would take them far enough out that their feet would lose ground. Durc had no concept of rafts, and even if he'd had, he wouldn't have risked Ura's or the baby's safety by trying to cross the deep and fast running water on one. All he could do was to travel along the river's eastern shore until he was far enough upstream to be able to cross it. To his dismay, he noted that this forced them to move into a northeastern direction... leading them into the open steppe.<br/></span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">The nights were getting ever colder now; wolves howled in the distance, and it seemed to Durc that the sound was drawing closer, too. He had no illusions about the real-world representatives of his totem — Gray Wolf might be guiding and protecting him, but the physical wolves probably had already made them out as prey.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Unsurprisingly, he noticed that he and Ura were being tracked by a pair of ravens a few days after he had first heard the wolves’ song. Raven was Gray Wolf’s best friend in the spirit world, and that friendship extended to the dayworld, too. Ravens not only followed wolf packs to feast on the leftovers, but also actively led them to prospective prey.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">He hurled a stone at them, not intending to hit them, just to chase them off, but despite loud protest, the birds stubbornly followed them. Their caws sounded almost like words — if the Clan had made noises incessantly instead of speaking properly.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Ayla at least was intrigued enough by them to calm down a bit, too distracted by the birds’ antics to remember to wail. Maybe Gray Wolf had sent his friends, Durc mused wryly, to give him a chance to hunt successfully for a change.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“Do you think it is possible that Raven is Ayla’s totem?” Ura asked him that evening. She had noticed her daughter’s fascination with the birds, too. It was unusual for such a young baby to pay attention to anything that wasn’t its mother, and it had made her wonder enough to break her self-imposed silence.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“I wouldn’t know,” Durc said uncomfortably; he didn’t want to wade into that spiritual thicket again. “I’m not a mog-ur.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“Do the Others have mog-urs? Someone has to find out which totem has chosen her.” Now Ura did look worried.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“Of course they have,” Durc said with conviction. “Everyone has them.” How else would survival be possible, if people couldn’t interact with the spirit world?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“I hope Gray Wolf will protect her until the mog-ur of the Others can call her totem,” Ura signed. Durc made a noncommittal sound — even if he was sure that Wolf would protect Ayla, because wolves always protected their pack, it didn’t behoove a humble hunter to speak for his totem. Only the mog-urs had the knowledge and skill to interpret the will of the totems and translate their messages. Durc had overstepped those boundaries once, and he was fiercely determined not to do it again. A second time might not go unpunished.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Ura seemed to sense his unwillingness to explore the subject further, because she didn’t say anything about it anymore; she lay down on her side of the fire and burrowed into her furs. She almost vanished in them; she had lost weight again.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“Ura,” Durc said. When she peeked out from her fur, he continued. “Are you still under the women’s curse?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">She hesitated, then shook her head.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">“We will share furs again,” Durc decided. He had no intention to mate — he was too worried about too many things to feel the urge — but sharing their body warmth would maybe help Ura and the baby to survive.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">Ura acquiesced, of course, and Durc carefully draped himself around her and the baby, and put his fur over hers. His mate felt cold to the touch, although she had been close to the fire and wrapped in her own fur for some time. Durc slung his arms around her and hugged her close. He had enough body heat for both of them.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">It still took a long time before she relaxed in his arms, and an even longer time before her icy feet warmed up, but finally she fell asleep. Durc dozed, listening with half an ear to the wolves’ distant songs, and the traitorous, furtive sounds of predators drawing too close to their glowing hearth fire.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm7">His mother’s hair was flowing in the summer breeze, a golden field of ripe grass. The weaving grass turned into the golden back of a cave lion walking away from him. He could feel her muscles rippling under his feet, the golden earth carrying him as he followed the tall silhouette of a woman of the Others into the setting sun.</span>
</p><hr/><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The feeling of the dream clung to Durc when he woke up, and persisted even while he fed wood to the campfire, and all through their morning meal. The air was expectant, portentous. His mate was nursing the baby, but the child was complaining, unhappy with what her mother could offer. Durc had not much knowledge of woman things, but he had grown up at the fire of the medicine woman, and had seen some conversations by accident. Ura’s milk was running dry.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The ravens were eyeing him from the branches of a nearby dwarf fir.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He leaned forward; Ura looked up at his sudden motion. “If the ravens would lead us to the Others,” Durc said, “I would take that as a sign that Raven is Ayla’s totem.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ura’s eyes widened in alarm. It was a dangerous sentiment to utter; the totems did prefer to have a home, and they did protect the humans under their tutelage, but that protection was of a spiritual nature. Surviving in the outer world depended on one’s own skill and cunning, and nobody could expect the totems to shield them from the very real dangers of predators, starvation, or illness — although sometimes the totems decided to bend one’s luck in one direction or the other.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The otherworld was populated by a myriad of spirits, some benevolent towards humans, many malevolent, and most of them indifferent but alien enough to wreak havoc if they accidentally came into contact with the human world; a complicated ecology of otherworldly forces that only the mog-urs had the knowledge and experience to navigate. Challenging the totems to submit themselves to this kind of test, coming from a human who was as skilled at surviving in the otherworld as a woman was skilled to single-handedly hunt down and kill a mammoth, was more than reckless.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But Durc had realized with painful clarity that neither his mate nor her child would survive if he didn’t find the Others soon; and the aftermath of his dream was still with him. He felt very close to the spirits right now, and he knew, deep in his bones, that they were listening.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">As if on cue, the ravens began to caw; both humans’ heads jerked around at the sound. To Durc’s ears, it sounded more amused than scolding, not that this was less alarming. A spirit’s sense of humor was very different from that of a human.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Then the ravens flew away.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Only a little distance, though, before they perched on a tree again and repeated their spectacle. This was the first time they were moving away from the humans instead of following them. Ura and Durc exchanged a wide-eyed look, then began to hastily break up camp. The ravens waited, apparently finding the sudden flurry of activity in the human camp fascinating.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Their meager belongings didn’t need a lot of time to gather up. Durc moved towards the ravens, still not fully believing they would lead him anywhere. This might just be a new game to them — ravens loved to play.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But the birds spread their wings and sailed away, perching in another tree a little further away.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Wherever the ravens flew, the humans followed. The birds only ever flew a little distance, then settled in a tree or a shrub, or even busied themselves on the ground, digging with their beaks for bugs and other insects. Whenever the little group of travelers came near them, they flew off a little distance again.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc stopped paying attention to his surroundings; his eyes were on the ravens. He was dimly aware that the birds were leading him farther up north, towards the deadly cold of the far-off glacier. But he had stopped worrying; he had surrendered to the power and the secret designs of the spirits.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The second and the third day were the same. They got up, ate what little provisions were left, and followed the ravens. They had stopped talking; Durc had no eyes for whatever signs his mate would’ve made to him anyway. His field of vision and his awareness had narrowed as if he had been hypnotized; his world felt unreal, as if he was still walking through his mother’s dream, or maybe already in the next world.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">It was only when the ground suddenly sloped down under his feet that Durc woke from his strange trance. The big river that had halted their westward journey had split up, and the smaller channels weren't that wide anymore; the water didn't seem to be as deep, but fast flowing. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Durc blinked; he hadn’t even heard the rushing of water. </span><span class="tm8">Now the sounds were all flooding back into his awareness, most distinctively the excited croaks of the ravens, who were flapping their wings and vanishing to the other shore and then out of his sight. Durc stared after them, fighting down panic. It </span> <em> <span class="tm9">had </span> </em> <span class="tm8">just been a game to them; or maybe they had punished him by leading him to nowhere and leaving him there — punished him for challenging the spirits, and amusing themselves while doing it.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Overwhelmed with shame and desolation, his gaze dropped to his feet.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And fell on a single black feather lying on the ground.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Heart pounding, he bent down to pick it up and, turning it in his fingers, stared again across the river, trying to catch sight of the ravens. Instead, his eyes fell on a being that had the shape of a man, but was almost as dark as the feather in his hand.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc involuntarily took a step back, pushing Ura with the child behind him to shield her from whatever spirit was balancing on a large boulder in the middle of the river. It seemed to be unaware of his presence; it peered down into the water as if it was looking for something. Hunting fish?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Why would a spirit need to eat fish? Or maybe it was a river spirit...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But the longer Durc looked on, the more the being became a man of flesh and blood. A man slipping on the wet rocks and making sounds under his breath incessantly. He had a bulging forehead and a knobby protrusion on his lower jaw; no eye ridges, but straight, long legs.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He didn’t look anything like the mother Durc remembered, but there was suddenly no doubt that he was one of the Others.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc looked at the feather in his hand.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">A cry from the direction of the river made him jerk his head up again. The man was slipping on the wet rocks again, losing his footing. Durc involuntarily held his breath as the man from the Others fought for balance.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Then he fell backwards into the raging water, and didn’t get up anymore. Durc saw his body being swept downriver, towards the spot where he and Ura were standing. The man of the Others didn’t resist the water — he had to have hit his head on a rock under the water’s surface; he was knocked out, like Broud had been.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc shoved the feather into Ura’s hand and began to wade into the churning water. He couldn’t swim — nobody had been there to teach him — but the water was only waist high.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He reached the man just as the body was floating by, and dragged him out of the water. The man didn’t open his eyes, but he was still breathing, his heart still beating. Maybe he wouldn’t share Broud’s fate if they could warm him up.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc quickly built their campfire while Ura, at his order, stripped the soaking garments from the man’s body. Both she and Durc paused to stare at the unconscious man with unabashed curiosity. The Other’s whole body was, in fact, of the same dark color; only the soles of his hands and feet were light-colored. Durc’s and Ura’s skin wasn’t white — it was more of a golden brown — but little Ayla was pale, and Durc remembered that his birth mother had pale skin, too. Maybe the Others simply had a wider range of colors between them.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">They wrapped the dark man into as many furs as they could afford, and moved him as close to the fire as possible. Then they waited for him to wake up. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc caught Ura contemplating the raven feather, but didn’t dare to comment. She was probably remembering his words about testing the totems, and although she hadn’t said anything then, he knew that she had considered it the ultimate blasphemy.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">But maybe it hadn’t been his own idea from the beginning. Durc eyed the man of the Others. Maybe Raven had put the idea into his head. It was known that Raven was a friend of Gray Wolf in the world of the spirits, close to him like a brother. Maybe Durc’s totem had asked him to come and be little Ayla’s totem. Maybe Raven had devised a way to reveal himself to the mother’s mate, even though Durc wasn’t a mog-ur. Raven was sly and full of tricks, and he liked a good joke.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Yes, Durc decided with relief, it hadn’t been his own idea. Raven had goaded him into following him. After all, hadn’t those two ravens been on their tails for days, driving him to distraction?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man of the Others finally stirred and moaned, returning to consciousness. Durc marveled again at his unusual color — so similar to a raven’s...</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">... and then it hit him: Raven had led him to this man, this man from the Others, and maybe Raven had made the man slip and hit his head so that Durc could save him from drowning. The man owed him now; a life for a life... for a chance of survival.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man sat up slowly and drew the fur closer around himself. His teeth were clattering from the cold, and Durc motioned to Ura to offer the man some hot tea.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man eagerly reached for the cup, made some more noises, and lifted it to his lips.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And spit out his tea as he finally looked up and into the faces of his rescuers. His eyes widened as his gaze flitted between Durc and Ura. Durc didn’t move, but his hand clenched around his spear.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <em> <span class="tm9">He owes me! I saved his life, and he owes me!</span> </em>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man carefully put the mug down and, to Durc’s relief, began to speak intelligibly, even if his speech was simple and crude like a child’s. Maybe the Others were simple, like children?</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“Please, forgive,” the man was saying, “I not look first. I not...” He searched for words, and it suddenly dawned on Durc that maybe the man wasn’t simple, but didn’t know the common Clan signs.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">And why would he? He wasn’t Clan.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">But then... why </span> <em> <span class="tm9">would </span> </em> <span class="tm8">he? Why did he know Clan signs at all? The Clan and the Others usually avoided each other.<br/></span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man finally settled for, “Not many people like you in this place. I think people like me save me from water.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“We have traveled a long way,” Durc said. He made his signs slowly and exaggerated them, so the man would understand him. “We sought to find people like you.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man raised his brows in surprise. “Find people like me? Why?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc scratched his head. “Not easy to explain. The woman has a child. It needs shelter.” He vaguely gestured to the north, indicating the icy wind that was blowing down from the faraway glacier.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man nodded. “You are welcome with my people.” The corners of his mouth moved up, and Durc blinked. The man was making the happy face. Broud had scolded him for it, and the others had nervously drawn away whenever Durc had made it, and so he had stopped making it; seeing it now caused a strange sensation in his heart, a stab from a half-forgotten memory.<br/></span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><em> <span class="tm9">This must be something the Others do, </span> </em> <span class="tm8">Durc realized. </span> <em> <span class="tm9">Something my birth mother must’ve done, too. No wonder it made Broud so mad when I did the face — it reminded him of her.</span> </em></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“My name,” the man was saying, “is Ranec of the... no, forget that. Ranec.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc repeated the name, with some difficulty, and said his own, which Ranec had problems repeating, too. As he listened to the man trying not to swallow his own tongue, Durc felt the corners of his own mouth twitch as they tried to lift into the happy face. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man saw it and bared his teeth, and after a moment of tensing up, Durc realized that this was the even-happier-face, and relaxed again. His curiosity grew <em><span class="tm9">— </span></em>both about the man's knowledge of Clan signs and his sudden appearance. He was all by himself, but had mentioned his people, so Durc assumed that they were not too far away. Asking the man directly would've been rude, though.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"Maybe we can hunt fish together later," he said. "You found a good spot?"</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">The man... Ranec... blinked, looking confused for a moment. Then he made the happy face again, happy-sounds leaving his open mouth. "I not hunt fish," he said, "I just... look at fish."</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Now it was Durc's turn to be confused. "Look at fish? But not hunt? Why?"</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"To see... how fish move," Ranec tried to explain, but looked frustrated at his lack of words. "When I carve bone fish later..." he threw up his hands in obvious defeat. "I don't know words to explain."</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc agreed with him and chose to ignore that last bit. Nobody could <em>make</em> fish, Ranec had simply used a wrong sign. The first part, though... just looking at fish for no good reason... it reminded him of Raven again, or at least of his dayworld creatures. Magpies and crows and ravens... they all could be distracted by the weirdest things and decide to carry them away or play with them. Ranec didn't just share their color, apparently, but also their strange sense of fun. Durc was beginning to wonder if Raven was maybe his totem, too. It would make sense that he would've been led by the pair of ravens to this man in particular. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Yes, it all added up. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">“Who are... these?” Ranec pointed at Ura and the baby. Durc </span>frowned<span class="tm8">— this was Not Done... but Ranec wasn’t Clan. No need to assume he’d know Clan customs just because he knew some of their words. And Durc was still terribly curious to know where he had learned those.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He gave a curt nod at his mate. “Ura.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“And a baby?” Ranec was still making the happy face. “Can I see?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">At a gesture from Durc, Ura drew down the fur from Ayla’s head.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He whirled around when he heard Ranec gasp. The happy face was gone; Ranec looked as shocked as Broud had.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc grasped his spear harder. </span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“She looks like baby of my people,” Ranec finally said. “You... find her somewhere?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc made a sharp, negating gesture. “She is the child of my mate. We don’t know why the child looks like this. There was no man of the Others around.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Ranec nodded, looking thoughtful but not suspicious or disgusted, and for some reason, Durc felt compelled to add an explanation. “My people think baby is deformed, because her mother is of mixed spirits... like I am.”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">He wondered how to explain mixed spirits, but the <span class="tm8">Other nodded understandingly. “</span><span class="tm7">I know child of mixed spirits in my clan, too</span><span class="tm8">,” he signed, and Durc struggled to hide his surprise. </span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“You have a mixed child in your clan?” he asked. “How?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">“His mother... uh, long story, I know not enough words.” Ranec looked uncomfortable. “Very sad. Boy has weak heart...he dies — not even Ayla can save him, Ayla the best healer...”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Durc felt his stomach drop. His head swam, as if all the blood had fallen into his gut. “Ayla?”</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">The other man nodded, oblivious to his shock. “A woman... she live with your people for a long time. She always good to Rydag, </span> <span class="tm7">not think he is...” he tried to mimic Durc’s gesture for ‘deformed’</span><span class="tm7">, then settled for ‘not right’, “she had son like him, son of mixed spirits..."<br/></span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">His hands slowed, then stopped moving altogether, and Durc watched as the same revelation washed over Ranec. The Other’s eyes grew huge, his jaw dropped.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6"><span class="tm8">Suddenly he stabbed his finger at him. <em>"You...</em> you are Durc! </span> <span class="tm8">Durc of Ayla!" He slapped his hand against his bulging forehead and made happy sounds, but for some reason, he didn't seem too happy. More and different sounds followed, but they weren’t accompanied by any intelligible signs. Durc watched the man closely. His face and body expressed amusement, and something else — something complicated that Durc couldn’t decipher.</span></p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">He waited, not sure how to interpret this emotional outburst, and feeling extremely uncomfortable; a man of the Clan was expected to never lose his self-control like that. Never mind that he was himself still reeling, but at least he managed to keep all his chaotic feelings locked inside himself.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">Finally, Ranec calmed down. He looked from Durc to Ura to little Ayla, and back to Durc again, and heaved a deep sigh. "If you are the son of Ayla..." he said. "Then you are more than welcome with my people.</span>
</p><p class="tm5 Normal tm6">
  <span class="tm8">"You are kin."</span>
</p>
  </div></div>
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